In this post I’ll show you how we updated our old-fashioned hutch and turned it into a sleek, modern buffet for our kitchen.
I have to start out by saying that I love a good, old-fashioned hutch. Always have, always will. I love the look of a hutch in a dining room, all filled up with dishes and seasonal decor. I think there’s nothing cozier and more nostalgic. We got our hutch when a neighbour of ours left it at the side of the road about 10 years ago. After a few paint transformations and having it in a few different spots around the house, I realized this spring that what I really wanted was something lower that would add some usable horizontal space to our kitchen. So this that’s how this furniture update came to be!
The Hutch Before
Let me tell you: I did not take this furniture transformation lightly. Even though this hutch was in pretty rough shape, with sagging shelves and peeling veneer in places, photos of it always performed really well on Pinterest, so I knew that people enjoyed its classic charm. I did too, but I often found myself leaving the decor on the shelves the same for a very long time and it just felt old and stale and dusty most of the time. Those sagging shelves also really bothered me, but it was never a big priority to fix them, so they stayed like that. Of course I always tried to make it look its best in photos and here are some examples of that!
The Update
When we installed our new flooring and shiplap in the kitchen in the spring, we decided to finally give this hutch a little update too. Well, actually at first I tried looking for a new piece of furniture to go in this spot instead, but I just couldn’t get over the fact that I loved the shape and proportions of the base of this hutch so much better than anything I could find. So I decided to keep just that part. 🙂
We removed the top part of the hutch, leaving just the base cabinet and installed a new butcher block top on top of that.
Can you tell what the top is made from?
It’s actually the same IKEA counter as we have in the rest of the kitchen! We had an extra piece of it sitting in the garage for all these years, so we cut that down and it was perfect.
I gave the rest of the cabinet a fresh coat of paint and added new simple modern hardware to the big wide drawer. It’s like a whole new piece!
Honestly, I haven’t regretted doing this for even a moment. Having all that extra space to put things down has been so great. I always talk about trying to include as many open horizontal spaces as possible when you’re designing a mudroom, and I guess that counts for a kitchen or dining room too! They just always come in handy.
I love this buffet/console/cabinet has a fresh new look, but still feels like a classic and fits perfectly in our old house. 🙂
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.